Usually, survival kits are carried along in the passenger cabin of an aircraft whenever an aircraft flies over regions in which in the case of an emergency landing either on land or on water, or in the case of a crash, search and rescue will be particularly difficult and/or the flight route is 50 nautical miles away from a coastline. The standard model of a survival kit contains, for example, first aid equipment, nutrition that is high in calories, water etc. and weighs up to approximately 10 kg. In the case of the aircraft making an emergency landing on water such a survival kit is removed from a stowage compartment, is latched to a slide raft by means of a hook, and when the slide raft is detached from the aircraft's fuselage is carried along in the slide raft.
Generally speaking, survival kits are stored in hatracks or other stowage compartments. In an emergency said survival kits have to be removed from these stowage locations and have to be taken to a slide raft. Due to the absence of installation space in the conventional slide raft compartments at the exit, the survival kits cannot be accommodated together with the folded slide raft. For this reason, depending on the number of slide rafts, in each case two survival kits are accommodated in suitable stowage compartments near the exits in the cabin.
Conventional stowing away of survival kits is associated with a disadvantage in that the survival kits are not located directly at the exit, but instead must first be removed from a corresponding stowage compartment by a member of the cabin crew, and must be transported to the exit, either while the passengers are evacuated or thereafter. Furthermore, if several survival kits are stowed away in hatracks or other stowage compartments, stowage space, which is anyway severely limited, is lost. In particular if there are a lot of passengers on board, a large number of relatively large survival kits have to be carried on board, which survival kits prevent many passengers from accessing baggage space for their cabin baggage.